The Grips of Reality
by Antha32
Summary: "This is real. Real or not real." I blink softly, looking at him. "Real, sweetheart. It's real." The grip of reality is hard to keep. Written for the March Starvation Prompt- Insanity. Katniss/Peeta pairing.


**The Grips of Reality**

**Word Count: 797**

**Starvation Prompt: Insanity**

Katniss Everdeen

_I'm miles from where you are. I lay down on the cold ground. I pray that something picks me up and sets me down in your warm arms._

The cup drops from his hands with a bang. It is shattered, on the ground in a million pieces, before I even turn around. Glass litters the ground at his feet, and he holds tightly to the kitchen counter of our house. His soft blue eyes are focused on something that isn't there. He is shivering, but not from the cold winter air that awaits us outside.

He hasn't had a flashback in months. He has felt better, and he has been looking after me more often than I have been looking after him. I must have missed something, because here he stands before me, lost. Gone is my Peeta- his grip on reality has slipped once more, as ours often do.

I hesitantly walk over to him and place my hands on his back softy, wrapping my arms around him. "Peeta," I murmur against his shaking shoulder, "it's not real."

He shakes his head, trying to remove himself from my grasp. I hold onto him tightly from behind. I am not letting him go anywhere.

"No, Peeta, it's not real, I promise it's not real." He still won't stop shaking, and now I'm scared, scared that I may really have lost him this time, just as I lost everyone else. Finnick, Boggs, Rue, Gale, my mother and father, my little duck, Prim…

Tears are cascading down my cheeks and all I know is know he cannot leave me too. I cannot lose Peeta after all of this. He is the only one I have left, the only one who has come back to me, and as much as I don't deserve it, allows me to love him and loves me back. Without him, I will break whatever hold on reality I have and fall into a hole I will never be able to dig myself out of. All my hope in this horrible world is grounded in him, for he is always my dandelion in the spring, and without him, I will not be able to live. Following his conversation with Gale years ago, he is the person I cannot survive without.

I continue to hold him, but I'm shaking too, now, for I do not know what to do. I cannot do this without him. He needs to come back. He _has_ too. I can help him, and he can help me. I need him. I _need_ him. No, no, no, no…

"Please don't leave me here alone," I choke out.

Finally, his shaking stops and his grip on the counter breaks. He is breathing heavily and looking down, but he's here, he's back, and suddenly I'm okay. I can deal with a damaged Peeta. I cannot deal with no Peeta.

"Peeta," I say softly, turning him around. His long lashes are heavy with tears, but he is looking right at me, and I let my own tears fall with the sight of him. He's going to be okay.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice shaking.

"No, no, it's alright," I whisper back and pull him into my arms. He is safe. He is still here with me. I rest my head on his chest and listen until his heart beats normally, and then I look up to find him resting his own head on my shoulder. I softly push his blonde bangs away from his eyes and kiss his forehead. I push our foreheads together afterwards and hold him close once more.

As always, he asks me, "You love me. Real or not real?"

I respond as I always do: with a kiss to his lips and the reply of, "Real."

This time though, he asks me another question. "This is real. Real or not real?"

I blink softly, looking at him. "Real, sweetheart. It's real."

"Good," he whispers back, "because if this isn't reality, I don't know what can be."

He scares me somewhat with his words, but as always, he's right. There isn't a reality for the two of us with each other. Any reality that is different can't be real. Until the times when it is. When he loses me to the nightmares, or I lose him as I just did, to the flashbacks, our reality changes. One or both of us is in the Games again, or in the bombings, or in the world that our own tortured minds make up for themselves—a world that shouldn't exist. We always come back, though. I save him and he saves me. It's our game of sorts, pulling each other from the reality that isn't real and bringing each other back. We refuse to leave each other there. We refuse to stay. We have to come back, because losing each other to different realities is what we fear the most of all.

_**A/N: Hope you all enjoyed it. The song from the beginning is Set the Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol. It inspired this story. **_


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